What are your thoughts on evolution?

Question

I've heard people on here call it a theory a fact a hoax....bs...and numerous other things.

When other life is discovered in this vast universe and the life on that planet is vastly different from our own due to the "theory of evolution"...what will the religous right wingers in this country do then?

Chad S.

Very long way of saying you don't believe.

Some interesting stories you tell...if the earth isn't Billions of years old please explain carbon dating? Oh, must be a hoax by another scientist. Darn scientists are always getting in the way of religious bible beating.

Chad, did you spend your entire life only listening to a preacher. As you say, you can't get all your answers from one source...you need to do your research. If the only method of learning is from religous sources you will only learn what they want you to learn.

Reach out my friend and see the rest of the world. When you say things like the planet is only a few thousand years old you begin to sound very dumb...you certainly don't want that do you?

Earl D.

Why must it be that religous folks always say that if we must remove religion from school we must then remove theory from school as well...i.e., evolution?

Are there not a great number of theories taught in school. So if any of them counter act what religion teaches they should also be pulled from the school? Should we also pull books? Wipe them free of all computers in our schools? Perhaps we should have a book burning party.

Religion is a theory...evolution is a scientific fact. Nothing that is in the bible has been "proven"...so if we want to strike theory from our teaching perhaps the first thing to go would be the number one best selling fiction novel..."The bible"?

Answer 1

EVOLUTION *is* a FACT... (and a scientific theory)...
>10,600 US Clergy Fully Accept Darwin's ToE...
http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/clergy_project.htm
EXTRACT:
"To reject this truth (ToE) or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children."

Those Who Don't Accept It Are The REAL Dinosaurs...

Answer 2

Evolution is not a theory, it is a fact. Though we must all admit that there is still much to learn about it, and some of what we do know now may be found to be incorrect later, but that is the beauty of science. It is a continuosly self correcting process, as long as there as those who are willing to learn and discover more about our world.

EDIT: Steve, you seem to fail to realize that evolution isn't just random changes and mutations. Natural Selection is what makes organisms more complex. Do some research on wikipedia about it,

2nd EDIT: And tootsie, the reason we don't find so many transitional fossils is because fossils themselves aren't easy to make. Not every single organism that dies becomes a fossil. It's a very random thing

Answer 3

Evolution manifests itself in some things and not in others.

A theory is about a predicatable model based upon frightfully few facts that is subject to change or modification are facts that don't fit the model come into play.

Evolution describes the LIMITS of GENETICS. When these hit the brick wall EVOLUTION fails to live up to the fore told explainations, hence we change the explainations.

The problems in believe in or discussing EVOLUTION comes with what we ABSOLUTELY KNOW (very little) and ABSOLUTELY WANT TO BELIEVE (everything else).

It's about faith, so they've turned SCIENTIFIC evolution into a religious BELIEF system.

I stand on my first belief that in grades 1-11 ONLY those things that can be PROVEN over and over again with TEST TUBES and LITMUS PAPER should be taught.

The rest should be reserved for Honors 12 grade students who intend to go on to college where they can study the "what ifs" to their hearts content.

If we are GOING to remove RELIGION from schools ALL religions and belief systems should be REMOVED.

There should be no THEORETICAL BS taught to impressionalble students, except as PREPARATORY for COLLEGE.

We should SEPARATE REAL SCIENCE from WANNA BE SCIENCE

Answer 4

It is a theory. It is the most commonly taught and accepted theory on how life came about. There is no actual proof one way or the other. Since most schools only teach evolution and no alternative theory, many people assume it is a fact.

I am still waiting for an alternative to evolution or creation, since neither one seems entirely likely. I am open to suggestions.

Answer 5

God's got an infinite sense of humour and massive amounts of creativity we've yet to discover.

[ I tend to agree with Gould (My wife was in frequent contact with him on the internet before his death, a great loss to the world). There is indeed a randomness to evolution rather than a linear progression, we don't know how things are going to turn out yet. Man is such a recent experiment in the whole history, and no one but an idiot ever said he descended from a monkey. Darwin's wife spread a lot of the lies about his supposed conversion shortly after his death. It was unnecessary to convert a man who was already profoundly spiritual and convinced of the wonders of God's creation, of which his Origin of Species was an humble exploration. Dawkins is a lot about heat and little about light, a man made bitter by his own arguments. Given the distances involved and the brevity of human life, I deeply doubt we will ever boldly go where no man has gone before. Even if we do our eyes are conditioned only to see what we're used to seeing.]

Answer 6

Evolution claims, random change & natural selection make simple things spontaneously transform into more complex things without recourse to intelligent design. Chance and random changes simply do not produce higher levels of organization & complexity.

We have still yet to see any evidence of one species becoming another. Variations in the same species doesn't equate to evolution. For all we know at this stage is that those variations are preprogrammed in the DNA as possible variations. Mixing of DNA may make a new type of dog, but it is still a dog. So, even if a complex single cell organism managed to spontaneously form with perfect parts one time or even a thousand times, it wouldn't account for the wonderful variety of life here on Earth

Answer 7

I have no problem with evolution and Creationism because although Man's "day" is 24 hours, we humans have no concept of how long God's "day" is. It could be a split second or a trillion years. Either way evolution fits quite comfortably in either space of time -- it all depends on your own Point of View.

(as for the other planets and various forms of life out there -- lets not give them our religions.We've screwed them up enough)

Answer 8

Colossians 2:8:

8Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

"Truth" 1: Evolution is a fact supported by scientific evidence

"Evolution is unproved and unprovable."
Sir Arthur Keith, author of the foreword to the 100th edition of
Origin of the Species.


"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever."
Dr. T. N. Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission, USA.

"Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."
Professor Louis Bounoure, Director of Research,
National Center of Scientific Research.

"[Evolutionary theory] is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support . . . "
Michael Denton, molecular biologist

(Over 400 scientists are "convinced by new scientific evidence that Darwinian evolution is deficient.")

"Truth" 2: Life began as simple, single-celled organisms

"Each cell in the human body contains more information than in all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's certainly reasonable to make the inference that this isn't the random product of unguided nature, but it's the unmistakable sign of an Intelligent Designer.
Walter L. Bradley, The Mystery of Life's Origin

Biochemist Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box) says that modern science has made the Darwinian explanation of the origin


of complex life forms much less believable than it was in Darwin's day.In the 19th century, it was believed that a cell was just "a homogeneous globule of protoplasm." They did not know about DNA or the complex processes that go on inside a cell.

The book's central thesis is that many biological systems are "irreducibly complex" at the molecular level. Behe gives the following definition of irreducible complexity:

Behe starts with the example of a mousetrap; he claims that a standard mousetrap is "irreducibly complex". Such a mousetrap consists of:

(1) a flat wooden platform to act as a base

(2) a metal hammer, which does the actual job of crushing
the little mouse

(3) a spring with extended ends to press against the platform and
the hammer when the trap is charged

(4) a sensitive catch that releases when slight pressure is applied
holds the hammer back when the trap is


(5) a metal bar that connects to the catch and charged
(there are also assorted staples to hold the system together)

Behe then continues with his logic as to why this system is "irreducibly complex":


Which part could be missing and still allow you to catch a mouse? If the wooden base were gone, there would be no platform for attaching the other components. If the hammer were gone, the mouse could dance all night on the platform without becoming pinned to the wooden base. If there were no spring, the hammer and platform would jangle loosely, and again the rodent would be unimpeded. If there were no catch or metal holding bar, then the spring would snap the hammer shut as soon as you let go of it...

A mousetrap cannot “evolve” slowly, bit by bit. All of the parts must be in place at the same time. The same with such things as DNA.


"Truth" 3: Evolution has occurred over billions and billions of years

Evolutionists claim that although we have not actually observed these things happening, that does not mean that they are impossible. They say it simply means they are extremely improbable. It is extremely improbable that you can toss a coin and have it come up heads 100 times in a row. But if you toss coins long enough, eventually it will happen. Evolutionists think the world has been around long enough for all these highly improbable things to happen.

“If you took all the carbon in the universe and put it on the face of the earth, allowed it to chemically react at the most rapid rate possible, and left it for a billion years, the odds of creating just one functional protein molecule would be one chance in a 10 with 60 zeros after it. In other words, the odds for all practical purposes are zero. That's why even though some people who aren't educated in [molecular science and DNA research] still believe life emerged by chance, scientists simple don't believe it anymore.”
Walter L. Bradley, The Mystery of Life's Origin

"Truth" 4: The Earth is billions and billions of years old.

If we observe present processes, and make the assumption that they have been going on at the same rate since they started, we generally come to the conclusion that the Earth cannot be billions of years old. Some of the processes that have been studied that give young ages for the Earth are:


Continental erosion

Sea floor sediments

Salinity of the oceans

Helium in the atmosphere

Carbon 14 in the atmosphere

Decay of the Earth's magnetic field

The old ages for the Earth come primarily from the ages of rocks, which are dated by the presumed ages of the fossils in them. Radioactive measurements of rocks are based on assumptions that were chosen to make the radioactive measurements agree with the presumed ages of the fossils.

The eruption of Mount St. Helens produced many feet of stratified rocks which look millions of years old, but were produced in days or hours. Radioactive measurement of these rocks show them to be millions of years old too. But we know they were formed in 1980 because scientists saw them formed.

God gave you a brain so use it, and stop dismissing the true facts of life. Just because you choose not to believe them will never change the fact that they are true facts! I'm praying for you all, swallow your pride and acknowledge God. God bless

Answer 9

Adaptation is a FACT, we can witness that. Species changing form one to another is NOT a fact. It's a theory. And it's a theory full of holes because if man evolving from a "common ancestor" took thousands of years, there should not only be entire specie fossils, but also countless transitional fossils, and there are none. PERIOD. Not one.
SO you can jump on the "evolutions" a fact bandwagon, I call it "adaptation" mostly all will agree THAT happens, but species changing from one to another is PURE AND UTTER SPECULATION and theory.
Have an awesome one! =)

Answer 10

It's pretty much a proven fact, though I'm sure there are things we don't know or don't have exactly right. It's definitely the most accurate and scientifically logical theory we have.

Answer 11

Evolution is not linear but to a great extent by random chance. The Blind Watchmaker is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins in which he presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his previous book The Selfish Gene. (Both books are intended to popularise the gene-centric view of evolution and heavily emphasise microevolution at the expense of macroevolutionary theories.) In his choice of the title for this book, Dawkins makes reference to the watchmaker analogy made famous by William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley, arguing more than fifty years before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, held that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which the existence of a watch compels belief in an intelligent watchmaker. Dawkins, in contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, therefore dubbed evolutionary processes The Blind Watchmaker. In developing his argument that natural selection can explain the complex adaptations of organisms, Dawkins' first concern is to illustrate the difference between the potential for the development of complexity of pure randomness as opposed to that of randomness coupled with cumulative selection. He demonstrates this by the example of the Weasel program. Dawkins then describes his experiences with a more sophisticated computer model of artificial selection implemented in a program also called The Blind Watchmaker. In an appendix to a later edition of the book (1991), Dawkins explains how his experiences with computer models led him to a greater appreciation of the role of embryological constraints on natural selection. In particular, he recognised that certain patterns of embryological development could lead to the success of a related group of species in filling varied ecological niches, though he continued to maintain that this should not be confused with the ideas associated with group selection. He dubbed this insight the evolution of evolvability. After arguing that evolution is capable of explaining the origin of complexity, near the end of the book Dawkins uses this to argue against the existence of God: "a deity capable of engineering all the organised complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, . . . must already have been vastly complex in the first place . . ." He calls this "postulating organised complexity without offering an explanation." In its preface, Dawkins states that he wrote the book "to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence."
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1989) is a book on the evolution of Cambrian fauna by Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. In this book, Gould presents a thesis that chance was one of the decisive factors in the evolution of life on earth. His thesis is based on the wonderfully preserved fossil fauna of the Burgess Shale, animals from around 530 million years ago, just after the Cambrian explosion. Gould argues that although the Burgess animals were all exquisitely adapted to their environment, most of them left no modern descendants and, more importantly, that the surviving creatures did not seem better adapted than their now extinct contemporaneous neighbors. This seems to indicate that fitness for existing conditions does not ensure long-term survival, especially when conditions change rapidly, and that the survival of many species depends more on chance events and fortuitous preadaptations for future conditions than on being the 'best' adapted for the present environment (see also extinction event). The ultimate theme of the book is still being debated among evolutionary thinkers today.